How To Make Custom Shaped USB Sticks

If we would express how the USB flash drive is an amazingly effective marketing tool more often, it would be considered spam. And nothing less can be said about this small high-tech gadget. As USB sticks are replacing any other storing mediums, branding them will strongly endorse your company’s name, products or services, especially if they are custom made. This will help your business to stand out from the mass of printed promotional item standard designs. It will give your gift a unique aspect and feel and, most likely, you will prevent your give-away become a throw-away.

Promotional USB flash drives have an increasing digital data storage capacity and their standard designs are more and more diverse since they had become an established marketing tool. No wonder that manufacturing industry made bespoke and other custom shaped USB sticks available for purchase and their costs are more convenient because the production process evolved a lot in the last years.

High quality small scale custom moulding process is available now to all USB manufacturers and it helps create unique promotional USB items. USB flash drives can be produced from a lot of different recyclable or recycled materials, like PVC, ABS, PET and silicon, and they make the memory drives not only cheaper to manufacture, but also much lighter. Because the moulds are made from low density metal alloys and they can be cut with much finer equipment; plus the materials used to create the body of the flash drives are more malleable; the text or the logo is created with phenomenal details. We can say that PVC is one of the best materials to create 2D or 3D custom shaped bodies for USB sticks. It is a very cost effective way to create a highly desirable marketing tool, even in small or medium sized shapes.

The manufacturing process is pretty straightforward

First you have to decide what shape will best represent your business and then send it to your USB products supplier. If the shape is too large to send, then photos from different angles will suffice. At this point, a 2D or 3D wireframe CAD rendition is created and will be sent to be approved by your company. If it is approved, a soft metal mould will be created with the help of a computer controlled lathe. In the newly created mould, molten PVC, or other material, is applied and when it solidifies gets ejected.

Now, if lead times allow it, the first sample of the product is sent to the client for a new approval, but if lead times are very tight, it can be photographed and the images are sent for assessment. If the sample passes the quality and design test, the full quantity can be manufactured in about five days’ time for smaller orders. For larger orders, to speed up the manufacturing process, multiple moulds are required.

Assembly Factory

After the body is created, it is sent to a USB assembly factory, to create the final product by combining the controller chip and the flash memory by attaching them in the outer casing. If the preloaded data service was opted, the digital information requested is uploaded at this stage, to lower the client’s costs.

Usually, the overall conception, manufacturing and delivering times should not take more than 15 business days for the first order. If another order is placed, these times should be lower, as the moulds are already created and will be ready to be used to create another batch of custom made USB memory drives.

All companies face budget restrictions and every marketing department feels them too. This also creates a pressure on the promotional gifts suppliers to offer more for less. Because of this, you can find on the market custom shaped USB sticks or bespoke USB flash drives at the same price as the standard models, for orders more than 200 units, and sometimes even less.

Take advantage of this market trend to promote your brand in a unique and cost-effective manner, and be ahead of your competitors.